Saturday, December 21, 2002
Title: Consider Phlebas
Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit
Consider Phlebas is the third book by Iain M. Banks that I have read, the science fiction alter ego of Scottish novelist Iain Banks. However it was the first he wrote under this identity, and perhaps it shows. Though it may well have been my mood. I found the other two novels, Excession and Against A Dark Background, enjoyable enough - appreciating in particular some of the ideas that made up the Culture. Consider Phlebas being a Culture novel I thought I would also appreciate that, on the other hand I found it to be a chore. Excessive descriptions choking progression, to the point where I found myself disinterestedly skipping paragraphs in the hope that I would find something happening. The middle section in particular is indulgent, seeming to go nowhere and to take forever to get there. It seems ironic that having read a pile of Iain Banks books before reading the Wasp Factory I also found it to be dull when I got round to it.
Still there were some moments in Consider Phlebas, particularly from the idea of the Culture and the overall bigger picture of that and the war with the Idirans. A war-like race of giant aliens, the Idirans, have gone to war with the human culture that is the Culture. In a scuffle a mind has been ejected from a ship, an artificial intelligence, constructs that are at the centre of what makes up the culture. In its attempts to escape the Idiran attack ships it does something it shouldn't be able to do. The knowledge of this could change the course of the war. Unfortunately to complicate things the mind has ended up on a planet of the dead - a planet cordoned off by an elder race of aliens, a reclusive group who don't take an interest in the universe anymore. But if their space were to be desecrated in an attempt to retrieve the mind they are certainly more powerful than anything either side can understand!
The basic idea for the novel works. The rivalry between the agent of Culture's Special Circumstances and the shape changer agent of the Idirans works, as does the role of the Culture analyst. But the whole stuff with the pirate crew and the time spent on the orbital seems to be where it is all particularly lost.
Having picked up Look To Windward, Iain M. Banks' most recent novel, while reading Consider Phlebas, I can only hope that it is an improvement and more in keeping with the other pieces I have read.
RVWR: PTR
December 2002
